The Times editorial collective focused its indignation upon a much safer target — namely, “white, right-wing Americans, all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.” The statist screed makes passing reference to what it calls “the massacre of a bizarre sect by federal agents in Waco, Texas,” twenty years ago – without passing moral judgment on the “massacre” in question. Slaughtering religious eccentrics is a venial offense compared to the grave heresy committed by those who speak ill of the Holy State, since their “blather” — not the murderous actions of those who impudently presume to rule us, mind you — “tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world.”
Once again: Immolating harmless people in a church is a perfectly proper thing, assuming that this act of mass murder is carried out by the consecrated hands of the State’s enforcement caste, but referring to it as mass murder is the sort of thing only an incipient terrorist would do.In recent days, we’ve heard that the Obama Regime — which is running out of plausible foreign enemies — is seeking to broaden the scope of the “war on terror” to include “offshoot” groups that are connected only by rumor to al-Qaeda (which was always more of a brand name than an actual organization). Terror Warriors need not fret; ere long we’ll harvest the nettles that have been so plentifully sown by the Regime’s implacable aggression abroad. In the meantime, however, the Times suggests that the “war on terror” should re-direct its focus inward.

Citing the most recent missive from the self-appointed Stasi at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Times claims that there are 1,360 proto-terrorist groups — sneeringly denounced as “patriots,” “constitutionalists,” and “sovereign citizens” — scattered throughout the Soyuz. “These groups should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign terrorists,” concludes the paper.

A Sheriff’s Deputy in Gem County, Idaho deals with a “Constitutionalist.”

The Times editorial — which could be digested into the phrase, “The conspiracy theorists are plotting against us!” — brings to mind an incident in the early 1980s in which East German officials arrested a group of human rights activists for “defaming” the state by claiming that it suppressed freedom of speech. As Tony Cooper, an instructor in terrorism negotiation at the University of Texas-Dallas, pointed out in 1995, the Regime in Washington is perfectly capable of such totalitarian behavior.

“I see the formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally,” Cooper told the Washington Post in 1995. “It’s an exaggerated concern that they are facing a nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it is stamped out at a very early stage.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Never forget: A “conspiracy theorist” is someone who notices things without official permission — and a “terrorist” is anybody who challenges the government’s monopoly on violence.